He patted my knee. “Maybe I will just talk to the cat from now on.”
I chuckled softly. “It quit coming around when you told Niko to stop feeding it.”
Viktor stood. “Are you ready to face Sparrow?”
I’d been relishing my time alone. It allowed me to adjust to the foreign power coursing inside me. I hadn’t practiced using it, but now I knew why Sparrow was always so damn cocky. To think—no Vampire could ever charm me or scrub my memories. My energy would affect them. I felt strangely… invincible.
“Raven?”
I looked up. “Did Christian get any answers out of him?”
Viktor stretched out his arms behind his head. “I think he has been waiting for you to join since you are the one who owns his power. Do you think this is something you can control?”
I met Viktor’s eyes, feeling conflicted about my decision on whether to keep the power. Maybe I needed to try it out first, like taking a new car for a test drive. “I don’t know. But I’ll do my best.”
* * *
I thoughtChristian would have put Sparrow in the rock-climbing room since our prisoners were in the gym. But when Viktor and I left my bedroom, he guided me to a door I recognized all too well. It was the room where Sparrow had held me prisoner.
Once inside, I approached the cage and wrapped my fingers around the bars next to the open door. Even if Blue hadn’t broken the key in the lock, there was no need to lock the cage door. Christian had strapped Sparrow in a rock-climbing harness and connected it to the top of the cage so he couldn’t do anything but stand. His hands were bound behind his back and his ankles tied together.
I looked at his bruised face, some of his choppy hair covering it. “Why is he strapped in that thing?”
Christian remained seated in a wooden chair to the right of the cage. “He tried to bash his skull against the bars. Now the plonker can’t do anything but swing. I tried nailing him to the wall in the rock-climbing room. He looked like an ibex goat, but not as graceful as he kept thumping his noggin against the wall. We can’t have him speeding up his expiration date, so I came up with this solution since we don’t have helmets.”
Sparrow dragged his gaze up to mine and reeled me in. I saw the hollowness inside him—the utter despair. He was only a fraction of the charismatic man I’d first met at Lenore’s party.
“You must have spent years accumulating all this power.”
“Decades,” he said. “Seven, to be exact.”
“You could have done so much more with it.”
“More? I wanted to rid the world of these archaic establishments and unite us under one leader.” He leaned toward me. “I wanted dominion over all.”
“A king is only a king until someone takes his head,” Christian remarked. “And there is always someone thirsting for the crown.”
“We’re giving you a chance to redeem yourself.” Maybe he’d cooperate if I spoke rationally. Threats meant nothing to a man at the end of his rope. “The higher authority will take good deeds under consideration during your trial. Maybe they won’t restore your immortality, but they might let you live. Tell us how to kill the parasite. I can figure it out myself, but you should seize this opportunity while you can.”
Sparrow gave a pitiful laugh. “That power is greater than you, woman. It’s like giving a child a nuclear weapon. You have the audacity to think you can wield it?Icreated that power. I built it from the ground up.”
Yellow light surrounded me like a bubble, and I couldn’t get my simmering rage under control. I backed away when Sparrow snickered at the growing orb. Then he swung from his spot and howled with laughter.
Christian stormed through the open door and grabbed Sparrow by the throat. “I’ll charm it out of you.”
“Try it, Vamp. There are no instructions on using power that immense. You just know it in your bones. It’s intuitive.” He grinned from ear to ear. “If she doesn’t get that under control, it’ll burn her up from the inside.”
Hearing that, I quelled my anger and focused on releasing the power along with it. My heart pounded for a few seconds when nothing happened, but eventually the orb surrounding me turned into sparks and disappeared. The feeling was strangely addictive, as if I could get high off my own energy.
Christian spoke quietly, and by the blank look on Sparrow’s face, I knew he was charming him.
I approached the cage. “What did he say?”
Christian looked over his shoulder and threw me a dark look. “That to break the curse, you release the bound energy. That’s all he keeps saying.”
“Explain,” I said, slamming my fist against the cage. “Therehasto be more to it.”
Sparrow shook his head.
